This invention relates to a remote resetting mechanical postage meter and more particularly to a mechanical postage meter with an electromechanical resetting unit that makes available additional postage from the meter when authorized to do so.
Postage meters have been proposed that avoid the necessity of being taken to the Post Office for resetting. Early proposals used mechanical combination locks having predetermined combinations that changed with each resetting. The combinations stored in the meter were known to a central authority with a "data center", but not to the user. If the data center approved the introduction of a fixed amount of additional postage, it advised the user of the next combination. The user would enter the next combination, and the meter would be reset by adding the fixed postage amount to the descending register total. In meters of this kind punched tapes were sometimes suggested as the means for storing the fixed series of combinations. For meters that use the punched tape storage of the sequence of combinations known only to the data center, telephone communication from the data center of a combination identical to the next of a stored, fixed series of combinations in the meter has been suggested, to enable resetting the meter with a fixed amount of postage. In at least one instance, it was suggested that the code transmitted by telephone be a series of pulses of different frequency to be compared with spaces and punched marks in a tape. Each correct comparison of a mark on a space would advance the tape a step, and after ten advanced steps, the corresponding movement would be applied to the meter's mechanical descending register.
The art has also described electronic meters, which is to say any meters with electronic registers, capable of being reset by the user's introduction of a one time only combination. For resetting these meters with a variable amount of postage, a central computer of an authorizing authority generates the combination based on either the amount of postage requested or the number of resets of the pertinent meter or both. The combination is then given to the user by telephone to enable resetting.